Make Me Over: Eleven Stories of Transformation

This morning I’ve decided to make myself over—easy, huh?

Honestly, truthfully, I guess the answer depends on what you mean by makeover. I’m thinking about all those dumb-ass “reality” TV shows about totally remodeling people’s houses for them when they’re gone for fifteen minutes, or about getting liposuctioned and butox-injected and going from looking like a regular, kind of homely, fat person to looking like a not regular, less homely, skinny person. You know the shows I mean: nerd to stud, wallflower to runway model, dipshit to cool guy.

Well, I don’t have the money or time or energy for that level of makeover, so mine is gonna be a lot simpler and more straightforward—I’m gonna go from being a liar to being . . . well . . . NOT a liar.

Today I’m going to tell people the truth—like they say on Court TV shows, “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” All my life I’ve been afraid to do it, but today I’m going to. And here’s why—yesterday I noticed that nobody tells the truth.

What happened was, I heard this checkout guy at Wal-Mart say to this customer, “So how are you today, sir?” and the customer said, “Great, really, fantastic, how ’bout yerself?” and the checkout guy said, “Absolutely wonderful.”

I was the next guy in line, standing right behind the “great, really fantastic” customer guy. I looked up at the two of them. I stared at their faces and at their mouths as they were talking. I watched their eyes and I realized, I just absolutely knew, that they were completely, 100 percent lying! How did I know? Well, you’ve heard that expression “It takes one to know one”? When it comes to lying, I am a sixth-degree black belt with whipped cream and a cherry the size of Rhode Island on top. I think that’s called a mixed metaphor or a dangling modifier—something like that, I’m not sure. See, I’m already telling the truth! This is easy!

The checkout guy and the customer at Wal-Mart were not all that happy. I know for sure that they weren’t having as great a day as they claimed; otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to completely click off their happy-go-lucky attitudes in the first millionth of a nanosecond after they were finished talking.

So I said to the checkout guy, when it was my turn, “Are you really having that swell of a day?”

“You betcha!” he answered, and smiled real big.

“Bullshit!” I said. It just kinda slipped outta me.

“I beg your pardon?” His big toothy smile was all gone.

“You heard me,” I answered, actually kind of nervous.

Then he smiled again. “Have a nice day, sir, and thanks for shopping at Wal-Mart!”

I smiled, too.

And thus the idea of my honesty makeover was born.

I’ve thought a lot about this, and I’ve broken down and analyzed lying to become more expert at my truth-telling makeover.

There are three main types of lying: confabulation, where you just make shit up (I was late because this flying saucer snatched me up and did a bunch of experiments on my wiener); denial (You’re accusing me of playing with myself in the shower just ’cause I was in the bathroom for an hour and a half? . . . How dare you make such an accusation. . . .You don’t have any hidden video cameras in there, do you?); and omission (Gloria’s hair looks like shit today, she’s a good friend, I’m sure she’d want to know and forgive me for telling her. . . .) Think about how many times, on an average day, you lie. Come on; if you count all three types of lying, I’ll bet you can’t even begin to add it all up.

So today’s the day. From now on, it’s truth time for me—total truth. I’m not gonna ask anybody “How you doing?” if I don’t care how they’re doing; I’m not gonna answer anybody who asks me how I’m doing by saying something like, “Real good, thanks,” if I’m not doing real good. No bullshit today, nothing but the truth. For just one day in the life of a master liar, I’m gonna be honest.

It’s first period; Mr. Donaldson’s human-sexuality class, where we’re studying sexual reproduction—duh, huh? I mean the class is called human sexuality. I’m thinkin’ that only amoebas and germs and worms and flowers with parts like pistils and flagella and stuff like that can do asexual reproduction, although to be totally honest, sometimes when I’m in the shower, I catch a glimpse of how to have sex all by yourself—hey, honesty all day, right?

So anyway, there’s this big drawing of the female reproductive organs on a flip chart up front. All the parts. Nobody I know calls it all the “female reproductive organs,” but that’s what Mr. Donaldson is calling it—quite a waste of syllables, you know?

I throw my hand up, and Mr. D nods at me. “Yes, do you have a question?”

“Yeah I was wondering why you didn’t use a more normal word for some of the female reproductive organs—you know, something like pooty, or maybe a term like—”

Mr. D interrupts me. “Are you out of your goddamned mind?”

I don’t think he means to swear. It just flies out of him . . . you know, like an honest reaction.

Now normally, seeing a teacher get all red-faced and hearing him swear at me would send me into a fit of confabulation—something like, “Jeez, Mr. D, sorry, but I bumped my head this morning and landed face-first in a huge pile of paint chips, and I’ve been kinda dizzy and fulla crap ever since.” But not today—today I give him several examples of the words I think he oughta be using. . . .

I’m sitting with Mr. Myers, the vice principal in charge of discipline. I realize that I’m kind of lying to Mr. Myers by omission right this very second. He has red hair, the really bright kind that they use, colorwise, for stoplights. I want to ask him whether cars ever slam on their brakes when he stands on a street corner. I can’t get a word in edgewise, though; he’s yelling too loudly.

He bellows, “Are you trying to get kicked out of school?”

“Nope. I just—”

“Shut up!” Mr. Myers snaps.

I really want to ask him about the red-hair thing, but before I can do it, he throws me out of his office.

I realize that I’ve lied by omission. I shoulda asked him about his hair. I’m kinda mad at myself. I’m back out in the hallway and “on probation,” as Mr. Myers put it.

But now I see Brenda Allenby walking toward me.

Brenda’s a popular girl—a cheerleader and one of those happy people who is always smiling at everybody all the time. She’s wearing the tightest, cutest little pink T-shirt I’ve ever seen.

“Hi, Kyle,” she says as she walks toward me.

“Hi, Brenda,” I answer, then, just keeping it real, and still totally pissed at myself for not asking Mr. Myers the question I wanted to ask him, I add, “Your breasts certainly look perky today—have I ever told you about how often I think about you during my rather extended shower rituals?”

Whew!! There!!! No lies of omission in that question!!!

Brenda’s mouth drops open in total shock.

I quickly add, “Nice tongue!”

Brenda’s been dating Alex Baldwin, (no relation to the famous actor guy named Alex or Alec or whatever it is Baldwin—except that they are both VERY big, strong-looking guys).

I don’t even notice that Alex (the one Brenda’s dating) is standing right behind me when I make my honest remarks to her.

Now I realize it.

Alex asks me, “What did you just say to her?”

I realize that what I’d normally do in this situation is try denial: “What is it that you think you heard me say, Alex? You probably thought I said ‘perky breasts,’ didn’t you? No, not at all. What I said was ‘jerky pests.’ You know, jerks, pests . . .” Okay, admittedly that probably wouldn’t work anyway, but before today, denial in some form or another would have been my first reaction. But I’m doing my makeover, and so I have to be honest.

I ask, “You know what, Alex?”

“What’s that?”

“I know you think you’re popular because you’re a first-string jock guy, but here’s the deal: People are only nice to you because you’re so huge—nobody really likes you. Sorry to have to tell you this. . . .” I hesitate a moment and realize what I’ve just said, that little phony apology part at the end. So I add, “Actually, truthfully, I’m not sorry at all.”

Alex is smiling slightly. “Jeez, Kyle, thanks so much for your honesty.”

A little surprised at how well he’s taking this, I answer, “No problem.”

Alex adds, “And that thing you said about Brenda’s breasts being . . . what was it you said?”

“Perky,” I answer. “Wouldn’t you agree, Alex?”

“Oh, yeah.” Alex smiles more broadly. “I absolutely agree. There’s just one more thing, Kyle. . . .”

“Oh?” I ask, thinking to myself that this honesty thing is really going well!

“Ohhh, yeahhhh!” Alex says, kind of slowly, still smiling as he steps closer to me. . . .

It’s 11:04 in the morning. The doc says I can’t go home until after I take a piss, and that the medicine for the pain might make me a little bit dizzy, so I’ve gotta wait for a ride from my dad. The doc also says that my ribs should heal up within a few weeks and that we won’t know for sure how bad my nose is until the swelling goes down.

It’s all okay, though. I mean, I’ve got time to heal because I’ve been suspended from school for at least three days anyway; I say “at least three days” because there’s gonna be a Student Court hearing to consider further “consequences.” I don’t know whether I’ll be allowed to serve any additional punishments concurrently with my present suspension or not, but it hurts to even breathe (my ribs), and it hurts to be awake (my nose)—so the days away from school will be fine by me.

I think tomorrow I’m gonna try a different makeover experiment; in fact, I might even start today. For a while I thought about calling it my “white-lie” makeover—you know, where you never tell anybody anything but white lies. The whole white-lies thing makes a lot of sense to me right now. I mean, this isn’t a real tough call: broken ribs and a broken nose and suspension from school, yep, white lies sound like a pretty good idea!

But it might be a bit too much of a shock to my system after my admittedly failed experiment in total honesty.

I have to think of something else. . . .

Have you ever wondered what would happen if you just didn’t say anything but senseless babble to everybody who spoke to you? I mean, what if all you said for a whole day to anybody was some nonsense word like . . . oh, let’s say . . . skungy?

What if you had a “Skungy Day,” where if somebody said “Hi,” you just smiled and answered “Skungy”? What if when your math teacher explained an algebraic formula and he asked you if you got it, instead of telling the whole truth and nothing but the truth and answering “Hell, no!” or white-lying and saying, “Oh, yeah, it’s pretty clear”—what if you just answered, “Skungy, skungy skungy skungy”?

Uh-oh, here’s my dad to pick me up.

“Jeez, Kyle, what happened?”

“Skungy.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“Skungy-skungy.”

“Hey Doc, what’s wrong with my kid?”

“Well, he has some badly bruised ribs and his nose appears to be broken. He seems—”

“No, Doc, what’s with the ‘skungy’ deal?”

“Whaddya mean?”

“Kyle, tell him. . . .”

“Skungy, skungy skungy. Skungy skungy-skungy, skungy.”

Both the doc and my dad stare at me, but, skungy, can’t say anything but skungy ’cause today’s gonna be my skungy day . . . where skungy, and only skungy rules: you know, like “Our Skungy who art in skungy, skungy be thy skungy” . . . or “I pledge askungy to the skungy of the United Skungy of Skungy, and to the skungy for which it skungies. . . .”

Yep it’s my Skungy Day all right . . . not just in what Skungy says but in my skungy thoughts, too.

Honestly, really—TRUTHFULLY!!!!

I mean . . .

Skungy, skungy—SKUNGY!!!!